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In desperate efforts to gain ground on battlefields, frustrated governments in the Mideast and Africa are using barrel bombs against their enemies, launching the cheap, quickly manufactured weapons as a crude counter to roadside blasts and suicide explosions that insurgents have deployed with deadly success for years.

In Syria, forces controlled by President Bashar Assad began a continuing barrel bomb campaign in 2012 against areas controlled by rebels and insurgents, killing thousands in his effort to prevail in the three-year civil war that has left more than 160,000 people dead.

Last month, new evidence that Iraq's army dropped between four and 10 barrel bombs on insurgent strongholds in the country's Sunni-dominated Anbar province, which borders Syria, spurred U.S. officials to warn Baghdad to immediately desist or risk American support and aid.

British munitions expert Eliot Higgins, who analyzes weapons used in Syria's war, described remains of exploded barrel bombs in Anbar that appeared to be similarly manufactured -- meaning they were likely built by the government instead of random troops or insurgents.